


Gallons Of The Stuff

by DoreyG



Category: Frey & McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel, Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Getting Together, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29267970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: “Doctor Reid!” I cried, unspeakably pleased even through my confusion, and stepped right past the somewhat startled McGray to seize my old friend’s hand in a tight grip. “What a pleasant surprise to see you here!”
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid, Ian Frey/Adolphus "Nine Nails" McGray
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Gallons Of The Stuff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



“I still don’t know why I’m here,” I grumbled, trailing McGray into Waverley station.

“Ach, Percy,” he said, and sent me a rough grin over his shoulder. It would’ve been stupid to be charmed by it, and yet I had to dig my fingers into my palm to stop myself from giving into temptation and falling head first into his gaze. “I don’t understand why yer so grumpy. This is hardly the worst thing I’ve dragged ye into, over the years.”

Admittedly I was, perhaps, being a trifle overdramatic. Not that I’d ever admit it to him, of course. ‘This’ should’ve been a perfectly simple situation to navigate. McGray, as he had explained to me last night over a now traditional glass of whisky, was being visited by an old friend from London. When I had pressed him further, startled that he would admit to having any friends so far south of the border, he had told me that it was an acquaintance that he’d met through his supernatural investigations a few years ago and that he was looking forward to finally catching up with somebody who understood what on earth he was going on about.

To be perfectly honest, it hadn’t even been entirely McGray’s decision that I should attend. He had been the first one to suggest it, yes, but it had been the mildest request; one that it should’ve been perfectly easy to dodge with my very snootiest sneer. But, for some reason, the thought of McGray meeting his mysterious acquaintance - one who he apparently rated so much higher than me - alone had me seeing a decided shade of red. Which had led, through a few twists and turns that I wasn’t entirely sure of even now, to me trailing after him into Waverley station with a plan to keep an eye on things.

We found our way through the station easily, and came to wait on the train platform along with a fair few other excited folk. McGray was obviously fairly excited himself, downright _cheery_ in a way that I had rarely seen from him even after several years acquaintance. He bounced on his heels chipperly, and watched the board with eager eyes. He was obviously excited to meet this mysterious friend, and I was faintly surprised to find a bitter feeling curdling in my chest at the sight of it.

“What’s this mysterious friend’s name?” I asked, in a vain attempt to distract him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to be cheerful, I didn’t think I was that miserly yet, but it felt decidedly strange to have his attention so intensely fixed on somebody who wasn’t me. “You know, so I don’t embarrass myself in front of him.”

“But I _like_ embarrassing ye, Percy,” McGray said innocently, and sent me a mischievous grin when I glared at him. “Geoffrey McCullum, but just call him McCullum unless he gives you permission otherwise.”

“I do understand the polite boundaries of society, Nine Nails, probably significantly better than you.” I sniffed, and found myself a little disturbed when his grin only grew. “He’s not another Scotsman, is he?”

“Nah, Irish.”

“Dear God,” I said, and couldn’t keep a note of genuine disapproval from my voice. If there was anything my father had firmer opinions on than the Scottish it was the Irish, and some of his prejudice had inevitably trickled down to me along the way. “And I thought this mysterious friend, who is apparently just as obsessed with the supernatural as you are, couldn’t get any worse.”

“Why am I not surprised that ye have awful opinions about the Irish too?” McGray asked wearily, his cheeriness finally dented. I couldn’t help but feel a moment of regret, that I had ruined the one moment of genuine happiness that he’d had in a long time. “This is why I didn’t tell ye about him until now, ye ken.”

I slid him another sideways glance, feeling somewhat hurt by that observation and not entirely sure why. “Because I’d be truthful?”

“Because ye’d be _mean_ , Percy,” McGray pointed out, and while he didn’t say it with any particular venom - at least, no more than usual - I still found myself shifting uncomfortably on my heels at his words. “And strangely enough, I don’t like it when yer mean to the people I care about.”

I knew that McGray cared deeply for certain people, since I had met most of those people at one time or another, but somehow the thought of him caring deeply for a mysterious man that I’d never met got my back up. I cleared my throat, tried to pretend that I wasn’t bristling furiously at the thought. “I thought you were only casual friends.”

“We are, sort of,” McGray said, with a strangely dreamy expression on his face that I didn’t like one bit. “But there’s a definite bond there. He cares about the supernatural, perhaps even more than I do. He knows what it’s like to have to fight for things. And he knows what it’s like to lose people too, to have the entire life that ye thought ye’d have forever ripped from yer hands in the blink of an eye. He’s a special man, is McCullum, I don’t think that I’ve ever met anybody quite like him.”

“I… See,” I said mildly, and instantly decided that I absolutely _hated_ this mysterious Geoffrey McCullum. Because he was leading McGray on, indulging his awful obsession with all things weird and non-existant. Because he was apparently so much better than me in every single way, the hardy Irish soldier compared to the soft English flower. Because he understood McGray in a way that nobody else could, and _I_ thought I was the only one able to fill that role.

I genuinely don’t know if I would’ve said any of that to McGray’s face, in that moment I think I was genuinely capable of anything, but luckily I didn’t have to find out. There was a sharp whistle and a corresponding rustle of interest, and in the next moment the train from London was rolling into the station with a billow of steam. For the next few moments everything was confusion, people getting on the train and off the train and making an appalling amount of noise as they did so, and I was happily distracted from my burning jealousy.

For a few minutes, at least, and then a surprisingly stocky figure emerged from the steam and McGray let out a cheerful yelp of greeting. My first sight of Geoffrey McCullum hardly improved my impression of the man. He was grimy and battered, looking like an out of place thug amongst all the fine people walking around him. He wore a scarf around his neck even though the weather was mild, his coat looked like somebody had taken a pair of scissors to it and he was carrying a huge bag on his back as if he had to carry his entire life around with him. And even worse than all of those things, the moment he saw McGray his face burst into a wide smile in return.

I was prepared, immediately and resentfully, for a miserable few days while he was in town… And then, to my profound shock, I saw a familiar large figure lurking just behind the already loathed McCullum’s shoulder.

“Doctor Reid!” I cried, unspeakably pleased even through my confusion, and stepped right past the somewhat startled McGray to seize my old friend’s hand in a tight grip. “What a pleasant surprise to see you here!”

\--

I counted Jonathan Reid as one of my very earliest acquaintances. True, we had never been particularly close; but he had been in my life in one way or another since I had been in leading strings. My first memory of him was from when I was a toddler, a solemn child several years older than me coaxing me out from under a table. From there he had been kind to me when I was a child and he was an adolescent, when I was on the verge of manhood - and wondering what on earth I was to do with my life - and he was a dashing medical student, and when I was a medical student myself and he was a bold doctor striving towards great things. I had always cherished a certain fondness for him, a warm admiration that I had always secretly hoped would blossom into a fond friendship.

After the confusion of our greeting, that terribly unexpected reunion in the middle of a chaotic train station, we had quickly established what we were doing. It had, indeed, been a great shock that Reid was travelling with a common lout like McCullum, but it did make things somewhat easier. McCullum and McGray went one way, to catch up on whatever doubtlessly insane business they chose, and I and Reid headed cheerfully in the other. My last view of the train station had been a rather pleasing one, McGray frowning after me as McCullum attempted to talk to him with a surprising amount of animation.

Which had led, after a long walk chock full of warm conversation, to the two of us sitting in my study. Both of us grasping glasses of port, Reid’s admittedly rather more full than mine, and reminiscing in the fondest way.

“It is good to see you,” I told him eventually, my tongue perhaps a trifle loosened by the fine alcohol. I felt confident that I wouldn’t embarrass myself, I wasn’t McGray after all, but the pleasure of seeing a man I had long admired again left me feeling somewhat lax. “Though I must admit, I didn’t ever expect you to come up this far.”

“I wasn’t entirely planning to,” he admitted, with a charming smile that took away any possible sting from his words. “But when Geoffrey said that he was travelling to see a friend in Edinburgh and asked me if I would like to come with him, I hardly felt able to refuse.”

Reid had peppered little references to ‘Geoffrey’, otherwise known as the much loathed McCullum, through our discourse and I had to admit that I was still rather confused by them. It seemed astonishing that a man such as Reid, a doctor and a scholar and a man of the town, would associate willingly with such a ruffian. I found myself frowning at him, swirling my port in my hand as I tried to chase understanding. “You’re good friends, then?”

“Mm,” Reid said, and gave me a strange kind of glance. As if he was deciding how much he could trust me with, as if there were secrets kept between those two that few outsiders were privileged to glimpse. “You could say that.”

“Forgive me for saying,” I started carefully, and spared a moment on imagining how McGray would probably clip me on the back of the head if he was here and tell me that I wasn’t actually sorry for sticking my big nose where it wasn’t wanted at all. “But he doesn’t seem entirely of your social circle. Not quite the class of person you used to spend your time with.”

“I’m not sure how much you’ve heard, from up here, but my circumstances have rather changed lately,” Reid said, mercifully mildly. He really was ever the gentleman, accepting reasonable curiosity graciously instead of acting like I was being a fool for paying the slightest bit of attention. “I thought much the same thing when I first met him, I must admit, but things have changed a little since then. We have both developed ourselves as people, and started working together instead of engaging in an endless and pointless struggle. He has proven himself a stalwart ally over the years, and I am proud to know him.”

“If you say so,” I said equally mildly, and watched him dubiously from behind my glass of port.

“It’s hardly that strange a thing,” Reid said, for a moment sharp… But it must’ve been a trick of the alcohol, for in the next moment he was smiling at me charmingly once again. “After all, your dynamic with your Mr McGray seems rather similar.”

“He is most certainly not _my_ Mr McGray,” I protested, somewhat startled. The thought of having any kind of ownership over McGray sent a strange feeling right through me, one that I quickly decided to term as indigestion and leave be. “And what on earth do you mean by that, Doctor Reid?”

“Jonathan, please,” he said graciously, which only raised my estimation of him several rungs higher. “And I merely meant that you too seem polar opposites of the social scale, and yet rather close despite that.”

“We were forced to work together initially,” I said defensively, mildly surprised to feel a light blush rise to my cheeks. It had to be shame, at the thought of anybody thinking that me and McGray were together by choice. “Although, admittedly, we have perhaps grown a little closer since then. He has been besides me through many investigations, has had my back in many dangerous situations and has even saved me from dying a time or two. A pity, that none of that stops him from being a loutish idiot obsessed with things that don’t exist.”

“I see,” Reid said, and for a moment his eyes seemed to flash red. It must have been a trick of the dim light, or the port, or the two of them combined; in the next moment he looked perfectly normal again, his eyes the same clear shade of blue as ever. “And yet, despite him being a lout and an idiot and overly credulous besides, you still came to the train station with him to meet his friend.”

That sounded like some kind of accusation, and for some reason I found myself nervous of it. I summoned up my very airiest smile in response, expansively waved my hand in a way that almost caused my precious alcohol to slosh right out of its glass. “That was simply to prevent him from burning the entire place down in pursuit of some ghost.”

Reid looked incredulous for a moment, which was admittedly a very reasonable response to McGray’s ridiculousness. “I wasn’t aware that particular station was at much risk of burning.”

“You’re missing the point,” I said, just as airily as before, and drained every last drop of my port. An extravagant gesture, but reunited with my old friend as I was I felt the need for an entirely extravagant night. “But I am perfectly happy to move on to more edifying matters. My stepmother’s last letter, or at least the half of it I read before I felt the desperate need to burn it, said that you’d founded a hospital down in London?”

The real story was rather less impressive than that, but we both took great pleasure in untangling it. After that we had an entirely pleasant night, full of reminiscing and new stories and fond laughter that may well have been loud enough to disturb my neighbours. It was one of the happiest nights I could remember having, certainly one of the happiest since I’d been exiled to Edinburgh.

In fact the only fly in the ointment was one small thing, one barely noticed detail that still stuck in my mind like a pin. All through the evening I never once saw Reid drink, his glass remained as full as it had been at the start.

\--

Just because we were both renewing old friendships didn’t mean that our normal lives stopped. There were still things to do, people to see, jobs to be completed with all due haste. And our current job was a rather dramatic one, several brutal murders in which the victims had all been drained of blood before being dumped carelessly in the middle of the street.

Despite the strange and sad brutality of the case, I found myself in a rather good mood as I walked into the station and down the stairs to our tucked away office. I had spent most of the night chatting with Reid, and it had proved a most edifying experience; it was more pleasant than I could possibly say to finally be able to talk to somebody of sense and decency, somebody who could go more than an hour without mentioning some obscure supernatural point of order. My good mood lasted right up until I got the door open, and encountered McGray already sitting at his desk and staring at me with an expression like curdled milk.

I drew myself up and braced for a fight, even though I didn’t know entirely why I was bracing for anything at all. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” McGray said, his voice sounding just as sour as his expression looked, and leaned forward a little to fix me with a penetrating look. “Nice night last night?”

“Very much so, yes,” I said, still somewhat baffled to find myself mid-interrogation. McGray had never been this aggressive about asking after my life outside of work before… But then, to be fair, McGray had never asked about my life outside of work before full stop. “I cannot quite put into words how nice it is to have drinks with somebody sane for once. Doctor Reid was the perfect gentleman; witty, urbane and with more charm in his little finger than most people possess altogether. It was a pleasure to spend time with him, and a _pleasure_ to reunite with somebody who actually understands me.”

“Good for ye,” McGray said, and for a long moment looked angrier than I’d ever seen him; which was saying something, considering all the varied situations that we’d forced our ways through. “As it happened, I was thinking much the same thing from my end.”

I could’ve taken the direct route, and asked him why on earth he was so annoyed that I’d spent the night talking with somebody who genuinely esteemed me. Or I could’ve teased him a little, and thanked him for also being so pleased about me spending time with Reid. Or I could’ve provoked him into the kind of fight that we both secretly rather enjoyed. Instead I did none of those things, I simply glared at him as a sour feeling started to simmer in my own stomach. “Oh?”

“ _Aye_ ,” McGray said, and his anger faded away to be replaced by a certain kind of smugness. As if he was genuinely pleased, to make us both a certain level of displeased. “It was so nice to speak to McCullum _all_ last night. To spend time with a man sensible enough to realize that the supernatural exists, practical enough to realize that it’s best discussed over a glass of beer and fun enough to actually roll with the conversation instead of sniffing like he’d caught the flu any time it turned in a direction he didn’t like. To spend time with an actual _person_ instead of, for instance, an English lass so stiff that I might as well be talking to a statue most of the time.”

He was offering an easy start to an argument that probably had a high chance of melting a great deal of the ice between us, but for some reason I didn’t feel inclined to take it. Instead I stood there, much like the statue he had accused me of being, and ground my teeth until my jaw ached. “Sounds truly wonderful.”

McGray’s eyes glittered with a light that could only be called triumphant. I _hated_ it. “It was.”

“Amazing.”

“Aye.”

“Sublime.”

“ _Aye_.”

“Not at all,” I said, and was surprised by just how low and dangerous my voice emerged at McGray’s open provocation. “Like you wasted your entire night with a thug and a madman who wouldn’t know how to act with appropriate dignity even if he had instructions written in stone and hung around his neck.”

“Strange,” McGray said, with narrowed eyes and that old expression of confusing fury firmly back upon his face. “Because I was just thinking that ye wasted yer entire night with a stuck up priss who probably has a stick even further up his arse than ye do.”

We glared at each other, both vibratingly furious in our secluded little office. It was a ridiculous argument, one that could’ve been easily resolved by one or either of us backing down and behaving like mature adults, but both of us were fully committed to it. The arrival of Reid and McCullum had thrown a stone right into the middle of our usual dynamic, and instead of either of us picking it up or moving to repair the damage we were content to simply stare at it and see whatever it decided to do next.

“Enough blabber,” McGray declared eventually, and turned back to his desk after another fierce glare that had me grinding my teeth yet again. “Let’s get to work.”

“Yes, _let’s_ ,” I snapped, also still simmering with rage, and stamped over to my desk like a sulky toddler. Despite my best intentions, which really were noble at a deep down level, I remained in that state for much of the rest of the day.

\--

I would’ve, perhaps, been just about able to tolerate Geoffrey McCullum if his presence in my life had been confined to McGray teasing me about him every so often. But no, for some reason he _insisted_ on trailing McGray basically everywhere he went too.

Whenever I popped by McGray’s house, to discuss a new piece of evidence or simply see if he wanted a drink, McCullum was there and being obnoxious. Whenever McGray burst into my house, with either news or a brand new way of annoying me, McCullum was hot on his heels. Whenever I even glimpsed McGray in the street, McCullum was there at his elbow like a rather thuggish labrador. 

And even all of that I might well have been able to stand, with gritted teeth and a decided feeling of rage in my breast, if McGray hadn’t insisted on bringing him to our office as well.

“Is this really necessary?” I asked, a touch plaintively as McGray spread the evidence out in front of McCullum like it was some kind of offering. I was sure this wasn’t proper, was even more sure that we definitely weren’t supposed to be showing civilians intimate details of a bloody crime scene.

“Yes it’s necessary, Percy,” McGray said, his tone deliberately dismissive in the way he _knew_ got my back right up, and continued to spread out the crime scene photos until they were all across his desk. An entire smorgasbord of brutality, dead man after dead man staring up at the camera with hollow eyes and sunken in cheeks. “McCullum here is an expert, he should be able to tell us if this was done by any creature he knows of.”

“This wasn’t done by any creature, Nine Nails!” I snapped, utterly frustrated. McGray genuinely wasn’t a stupid man, was actually one of the most intelligent men that I’d ever met, so it baffled me that he could be quite so pig headed in this particular area. “It was done by a perfectly ordinary, if somewhat deranged, human being. Your insistence on pretending otherwise in the face of all evidence is only holding us back from catching a frenzied killer, and personally-”

McCullum, who seemed to have developed as instant a dislike of me as I had of him, rarely bothered to speak to me or even look at me while I was in his presence. But he was looking at me now, an unimpressed wrinkle between his eyes as he took me in. “Is he always like this?”

I saw McGray open his mouth in the background, presumably to back McCullum up, and I spoke again before he could insult me even further. “Yes, I am always interested in base logic. How kind of you to notice.”

“This isn’t base logic, this is simply denial,” McCullum said, still looking hardly impressed. To my eye he had none of the strange charm of McGray, only a brutal kind of focus that left me feeling decidedly unsettled. “I think I know what killed those people, though. All of this evidence points to only one thing: an Ekon.”

McGray was distracted, although for significantly more pleasant reasons than me. He turned right back to McCullum instead of me, made a pleased noise of interest that had me grinding my teeth yet again.

I moved up besides them, crossed my arms defensively over my chest. It wasn’t like I wanted to be included in such madness, quite the opposite, but the feelings provoked by McGray immediately abandoning me for McCullum were far from pleasant. “Coming up with brand new mythological creatures now, are we?”

“I wouldn’t be so excited, McGray,” McCullum said, this time going back to ignoring me entirely. Which was, unlike my complicated feelings towards McGray’s dismissal of me, most definitely a mercy. “Ekon are dangerous. They’re a higher class of blood drinker, smart and strong and constantly hungry for blood. You get a well fed Ekon, one who has the tiniest ability to plan, and he can take out an entire squadron of men in the blink of an eye. They’re only slowed down by sunlight, holy signs and a good dose of fire; and even then they’re a bugger to deal with.”

“That’s just a vampire,” I put in, genuinely incredulous over what I was hearing. It was both a mercy and a pity that we had no witnesses to this strange conversation, a mercy because nobody would ever hear of this if I had my way and a pity because I couldn’t exchange disbelieving glances with anybody else over this madness. “You have literally just slapped a fancy, made up name on a vampire and pretended to be an expert.”

“Shut _up_ , Percy,” McGray said, visibly excited. He leant back from the table with almost a bounce in his step, despite McCullum’s admonition to the contrary, and downright beamed into the air. He looked rather handsome while he did so, and for some reason I found that I had to avert my eyes. “This is a lead, finally a good lead. Right, lemme get my maps out and see if ye can give us any insights on how an Ekon is likely to move through the city…”

McGray hurried off to get his maps, still practically vibrating with excitement. McCullum went back to staring at the crime scene photos, a thoughtful expression upon his serious face. And I… I went straight back to glaring at McCullum, angry in a way that I wasn’t entirely sure to do with.

When this failed to provoke a reaction, when McCullum simply kept ignoring me like I meant nothing at all, I went even further. He might well keep ignoring me, but I had to try _something_. “I wish you wouldn’t indulge him.”

McCullum, to my surprise, did look up at that. Unfortunately only to blink at me like he had entirely forgotten that I was in the room, but I was still inclined to regard it as progress. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” I snapped, still annoyed despite the frankly intimidating way he was looking at me, and took a step closer to him. I was the one with all the power in this situation, not an Irish thug who made up fictional creatures just to make himself feel big. “It’s cruel, it allows him to keep burying his head in the sand instead of facing up to the reality of life.”

McCullum gave me an incredulous look of his own, I refused to be cowed by it. “And what would you know about the reality of life?”

“Significantly more than you, apparently,” I sniffed, and was surprised to find myself feeling genuinely protective of McGray. He was a lout and a fool and irritatingly inclined to ignoring me besides, but he didn’t deserve this charlatan stringing him along. “At least I don’t make up random words to make myself feel big, or poke my nose into places where I have no business being.”

McCullum cocked an eyebrow at that, for some reason, but didn’t comment. Instead he turned back to the damned photos again, bending down slightly as if having his nose closer to the husks would make the matter any clearer. “You’re an idiot.”

“Again, not as much as you,” I hissed, genuinely offended even though I really should’ve been used to such an insult in McGray’s company. Somehow it was different when McCullum said it, perhaps because the look in his eyes said that he actually meant it. “I have no idea why a man like McGray is keeping company with you, _or_ why a man like Reid is doing much the same, but I can only hope that they both recover control of their senses soon.”

For some reason that was the thing that finally got McCullum to straighten up again, and spin towards me with an expression of open irritation on his face. For a moment, just a moment, I felt a twinge of genuine fear at the sight of it. “Listen, you jumped up-”

“Found them!” McGray interrupted cheerfully, and thankfully obliviously, and bustled between us with a selection of maps clutched in his arms. He looked so thrilled to have found them, to have been listened to for once, that for a moment I felt genuinely bad that I was trying so hard to ruin his dreams. “Now we can actually get to work!”

\--

It wasn’t long before I got my revenge, though. In fact, it only took just under a day; until when we walked into the building housing the morgue to find my good friend Reid already waiting there for us.

“Doctor Reid!” I said cheerfully, near immediately overcoming my shock at seeing a social acquaintance lingering in my place of work, and strode across the room to take his hand in both of mine and give it a possibly slightly overenthusiastic pump. “What an absolutely lovely surprise.”

He also seemed slightly shocked at my enthusiasm initially, but he was a gentleman and a scholar and so that shock soon faded. He shook my hand in return, giving both McGray and I a slightly apologetic smile as he did so. “I apologise if I’m intruding-”

“You aren’t,” I said immediately. Just as McGray, who had been sourly lingering behind me, said, “You are,” in a dreadfully rude tone.

“But Geoffrey told me what was going on here, and I must admit that I found the entire thing rather fascinating,” Reid continued diplomatically, as McGray and I glared at each other. He had met McGray only once before, and rather briefly at that, but he already seemed to be getting the knack of ignoring absolutely everything he said. “I was wondering if I could have a look at the bodies of the murder victims, see if I can come up with anything that might help you.”

“No,” McGray said immediately, transferring his glare from me to Reid.

“Nine Nails, really!” I said, appalled at his rudeness. Granted, I had been just as rude to his friend McCullum less than a day ago/ But that was undeniably different, Reid was a well-mannered gentleman while McCullum _deserved_ it. “Although I must admit, this is highly unconventional…”

“I’m a trained medical doctor,” Reid said, peering briefly into my eyes. For a moment I frowned, thinking that I could see that same flash of eerie red that I had when we’d been drinking the other night. “With many years of experience, and a speciality in blood. I only wish to help solve these terrible crimes, in whatever way I possibly can.”

“Listen, _Laddie_ ,” McGray said, a sneer on his lips as he glared at Reid. He seemed determined to be as offensive as humanly possible, which was rather odd considering that he was generally perfectly capable of being pleasant to everybody besides me. “We already have our own far superior Doctor Reed working on this case, so we definitely don’t need a jumped up-”

“Why not?” I interrupted him, before he could progress to being full on offensive. To be perfectly honest I had been on the edge of refusing even with the imploring look that Reid had been sending me, letting a civilian - even if he was a doctor - into our private spaces was hardly that proper after all, but McGray’s protest soon convinced me in the other direction. “An extra pair of eyes could be extremely useful, considering all the blocks we’ve encountered on this case.”

McGray spun to me, genuine irritation upon his face. “Percy-!”

“If you can drag that fleabitten Irishman into our office, then I can most certainly bring a man of science into our morgue,” I informed him in a furious hiss, an almost gleeful grin upon my face as I did so, and turned smoothly back to Reid before McGray could do more than grind his teeth. “This way, Jonathan.”

I led Reid to the morgue like some kind of conquering general, McGray trailing grumpily after us every step of the way. There were still the bodies of four victims in there, the first one having collapsed into dust when one of our Doctor Reed’s assistants had handled it a touch too harshly, and I desperately hoped that at least one of them would be enough to give Reid a single clue. We needed a break in this case, and neither I or McGray had managed to tease out a single one in over a week.

“It really is nice to have you here,” I couldn’t refrain from saying, as Reid immediately bent over the body of the second victim - a notable thug who had haunted the streets of old town, once vital and bullish but now helplessly withered in death - and got to work examining him.

“You said, quite vividly,” Reid said mildly, and cast a sideways look to where McGray was still angrily glowering at him from the corner. “Has Geoffrey really been causing that much trouble?”

“You could say that,” I sniffed, fully willing to get onto my new favourite subject of hating every single thing that Geoffrey McCullum did. I really didn’t understand why Reid seemed quite so happy to hang around with him, let alone be on close enough terms with him to call him ‘Geoffrey’. “Every time I attempt to discuss the case with McGray, he has been hanging around and making a nuisance of himself. He is ill-mannered, stubborn, foolish and small minded and all of that is _before_ you get to his accent. He’s truly loathsome, I really don’t know why you indulge him.”

Reid cast another glance up at me, as he moved on to the next body, and for some reason I got the sense that he was decidedly disapproving of my opinion; how strange, probably a trick of the lighting yet again. “I… See.”

“The only reason ye don’t like him, Percy,” McGray interrupted from the side, before Reid could do more than make that rather mild observation. “Is because I’m paying more attention to him than ye, at the moment.”

“How dare you!” I snapped, genuinely offended, and spun away from Reid to give McGray a furious look. Granted, he was maybe right in the sense that I wished he hadn’t immediately started to ignore my existence when his shiny new friend had turned up… But the thought that I cared at all for his opinion rankled in a way that I felt disinclined to examine too closely. “If anything the fact that you’re paying so much attention to him is the one positive thing about his presence. After all, if you’re chasing starry eyed after him it means that I have to spend less time tolerating your presence.”

“I wasn’t aware that ye hated me quite that much, Percy,” McGray drawled, for some reason looking faintly hurt by me stating what we both knew to be the absolute truth. “Not when-”

It was at that moment, perhaps mercifully for I genuinely had no idea what McGray was about to throw in my face, that Reid looked up from where he had been examining the third cadaver and gently cleared his throat. We both turned to him, me genuinely curious and McGray still obviously furious, and he gestured us over without any further ado. “I think I’ve found something.”

McGray and I might be currently embroiled in a strange argument, but we were still policemen first and foremost. In a moment we were both by Reid’s side, and watching as he grabbed a pair of forceps from the side and slowly drew a long strand of straight silver hair from the caved in cavity of the cadaver’s chest.

“Great,” McGray said after a long and significant pause, looking unimpressed in a way that I rather suspected was put on for my benefit alone. “A strand of hair.”

“A clue,” Reid corrected him, quietly, and stared at his prize with worryingly intense eyes. 

\--

“Thanks to Geoffrey we now have several leads,” McGray said, once we were back in our usual dungeon with no mitigating presences in sight.

I scowled at him, genuinely astonished by how pig headed he was being, and crossed my arms over my chest. I had no idea why he’d apparently decided to loathe Reid on sight, but he had absolutely no room to talk given the madman he was currently keeping company with. “I think you mean thanks to Doctor Reid, actually.”

He rolled his eyes at me, and made sure that I saw it. God, sometimes I wanted to just slap him across the face. “I know what I fucking said, Percy.”

I sniffed, mainly because I knew that that little indication of displeasure drove him right up the wall. All's fair in love and war, after all, and this entire few weeks was heading steadily closer to an act of war. “There’s absolutely no need for crudity.”

“‘There’s no need for crudity’, bleh bleh bleh,” McGray mimicked what I was saying, making his voice deliberately babyish, and rolled his eyes again. He was obviously in an absolutely filthy mood, one that was utterly confusing but just as utterly annoying at the same time. “Do ye even hear yerself when ye talk, or are ye just yabbering pointlessly for the joy of it?”

That was cruel, even for him. I glared at him openly, dropping all pretence of this being a polite and normal conversation. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me, Percy,” McGray said, which was perhaps the most inaccurate statement to ever come out of his mouth in all the time that I’d known him. “I’d just prefer if credit was assigned where it’s due.”

I narrowed my eyes, pretended to actually think through the ridiculous things that he was saying. “To Doctor Reid.”

“ _No_.” I genuinely don’t know what he was expecting, presumably not for me to actually engage with his insanity after all this time, but what I said caused him to sit up with an expression of pure fury crossing over his face. “To Geoffrey McCullum.”

“Nine Nails, really,” I said, adopting much the tone I’d use to talk to a toddler. Although I’d never actually met a toddler, so maybe it would be more accurate to say that I might one day adopt the tone I used to talk to McGray to talk to a toddler instead. “Just because you don’t like the man, even though he’s perfectly lovely-”

“Ye ken, I don’t,” McGray said very bluntly, sitting even further forward in his chair to jab a brutal finger in my direction. “Because he ain’t perfectly lovely at all. He’s smug, he’s arrogant, he thinks he knows best in every situation and he’s obviously lived up in his ivory tower all his life. He seems to have no idea of what the ordinary folk of Edinburgh are suffering, and a person like that should be nowhere near a criminal investigation like this.”

“That is unfair, and slanderous,” I said stiffly, slightly flummoxed. I knew Reid could be a little urbane sometimes, and had admittedly spent most of his life as removed from reality as I had once been, but McGray’s snap judgement entirely ignored every single positive thing about him. “And I hardly think you have any room to judge, given the people that you let near our investigation. McCullum is a small minded, overly violent brute who shouldn’t be let near people let alone anything even approaching a sensitive matter. It is appalling to me that you have let your friendship with the man blind you to that.”

“Oh, hark at the superior lordling,” McGray snapped with yet another roll of his eyes, and carried on before I could snootily point out that my family - despite our long and noble lineage - had never got anywhere near a title. “Even if _any_ of that was true, ye pompous buffoon, I’d still like him and still trust him. Ye ken why?”

I tried to appear superior again, even though a large part of me wanted to bare my teeth and throw things. “Illuminate me.”

“Because he’s a lot more fun to hang out with than _ye_ ,” McGray snarled right in my face, and kept pointing his finger in a way that became increasingly more cruel as he carried on. “He may be a little straight to the point, aye, but he’s the exact opposite of a prissy, snobbish nightmare who wouldn’t know how to fight for anything even if he was handed a fucking manual. And strangely enough, that’s a breath of fresh air after all the shit ye’ve dragged me through over the past few years.”

“Oh, _really_ ,” I snapped, surprised to find that I was genuinely hurt by his words. It wasn’t like I’d ever call McGray a friend, at least not deliberately, but I had genuinely thought we’d grown closer over our time together; that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t hate every single moment spent in my company. “Well, if we’re on that subject, _Jonathan_ is also a lot more fun to spend time with than you. Even if he is a little detached from reality sometimes, at least he’s far more tied to it than you usually are. At least he’s not a supernatural obsessed, frenziedly stupid madman who can’t let one stupid thing go for the life of him.”

McGray’s eyes blazed at that, and for a moment I genuinely wasn’t sure if it was because of my insult against his life’s work or the fact that I had called Reid by his christian name. “Well, if you think he’s that great why don’t ye just _marry_ him.”

“ _Fine_.” Such a laughably ridiculous thing should’ve leant itself to a scornful dismissal, but instead I found myself glaring even more fiercely than before. “Maybe we can have a double wedding. Me and Reid, and you and McCullum!”

“Fucking wonderful! Maybe it can even be supernatural themed, even though ye apparently think that yer far too _good_ for it.” A worrying light of inspiration entered McGray’s eyes, one that I found myself automatically bracing for. “Or, ye ken, maybe it can actually be stick up yer arse themed. For ye two utter _pricks_!”

It was utterly ridiculous, so ridiculous that I should’ve been able to greet it with a casual laugh and move professionally on from the subject. Instead, I found myself more furious than I’d ever been. “Fuck you, Nine Nails!”

McGray, judging by his current shade of puce, was just as angry. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to mind all that much. “Go fuck yerself!”

We glared at each other for one long and extremely tense moment. And then, by mutual agreement, stormed to opposite sides of the room and busied ourselves with doing our actual jobs instead of attempting to tear chunks out of each other. For the rest of the day I remained in a state of high fury, and confusion as to just what had pushed McGray so very far.

\--

“Are you alright?” Reid asked mildly, later that night.

I was pacing back and forth in his hotel room, having repaired there once most of the business of the day was done. I was still furious from earlier; my rage at McGray’s totally unfounded sniping still a living thing, boiling up furiously within me. “Of course I’m alright! I’m better than I’ve ever been, on top of the world, absolutely _peachy_. Why on earth wouldn’t I be alright?”

“I don’t know,” Reid said, still mildly but with an eyebrow that was steadily arching higher and higher. “Perhaps because you came in obviously angry, and have been pacing furiously back and forth ever since?”

I stopped at that, I hadn’t been aware that I’d been so obvious, and settled for glaring into space instead. “Tell me, how often do you fight with McCullum?”

“Oh, fairly regularly,” Reid said, for some reason allowing a fond smile to spread across his face at the thought of tussling with that maniac. “We do, of course, get on an awful lot better now. But we are still two different human beings with often opposing viewpoints, and we have to work through that fairly regularly, Sometimes, we even-”

“What do you argue about, out of interest?” I interrupted him, which was perhaps somewhat rude but I knew Reid was the type to instantly forgive me given my current state of discombobulation. “Do you argue about how one of you is a hypocritical prick who wouldn’t know what genuine good taste was if it danced naked in front of him?”

Reid’s smile dropped, but his eyebrow remained firmly arched. “Uh.”

“Or, perhaps, about how one of you is a hurtful buffoon who has no idea how to behave appropriately or be properly grateful for all that you’ve done for him over the years?” I continued, warmingly happily to my venomous theme. “Or about how one of you has absolutely no care for the other one’s feelings, and apparently considers him some kind of heartless automaton who doesn’t deserve any kind of consideration? Or, oh, even how one of you should just _run off_ with that smug Irish bastard if he’s so head over heels in love with him?”

Reid took a long moment to process all of that, for some reason his eyebrow remained arched throughout the entire process “...No, I can’t say that we ever have.”

“Interesting!” I said, more brittle and furious than I had been for a good long while, and resumed my pacing. Maybe if I succeeded in wearing a hole in the carpet my mind would stop fixating on McGray’s appalling treatment of me.

A long moment of silence followed before Reid spoke to me again. His eyes tracked me throughout, a surprising amount of consideration in them as he trailed my progress back and forth across the carpet. “Frey…”

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately judging by the look in his eyes, he didn’t get to finish whatever he was about to say. Almost as soon as he’d opened his mouth the hotel door burst open, and McCullum strode into the room without even bothering to knock first. McGray was obediently trailing after him, and the excited look on his face hardly served to improve my mood any.

“Reid, we have a lead!” McCullum said, more energetic than I’d ever seen him, and then seemed to realize that the two of them weren’t alone in the room and sent me a glance that could best be described as scornful. “Oh, you’re here.”

“I could say much the same thing,” I groused, staring pointedly at the kicked open door. And then, when that failed to raise any reaction from McCullum, sighed and decided to move the subject on before I ended up yelling at him for his rudeness. I reluctantly looked at McGray, as the one slightly more likely to be sensible out of the two. “What do you mean, a lead?”

“We mean a lead, Percy,” McGray said very slowly, mocking me; although, to my surprise, I saw genuine awkwardness pass over his face as he looked at me. “A tall, silver haired man was seen closely following a man down Dumbiedykes street. It’s one of the areas where a body was found, and the man he was following looks an awful lot like…”

McCullum was still staring straight at Reid, an almost impatient expression upon his face. “It’s Redgrave.”

Reid had been watching the interplay between me and McGray with a thoughtful expression upon his face, but at those somewhat confusing words he refocused and looked at McCullum instead. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” McCullum said, and bared his teeth in a savage grin. Suddenly I was reminded of my first impression of him a few weeks ago, the briefest thought that this wasn’t a conventional human being but rather a predator who only barely bothered to fit in. “We’ve chased the bastard down at last.”

“I… See,” I said, openly confused. It was somewhat strange, to realize halfway through the conversation that you thought you were having that you were actually just a bit player in an apparently far more dramatic scene. Oh well, I forced myself to stop looking at them and looked back at the solemn expression on McGray’s face instead. “We should probably go check this out.”

“Aye,” McGray said, equally as confused but mercifully also equally committed to the course of justice.

Unfortunately, in the middle of that finally positive moment, McCullum had to put his foot in it as per usual. “Yup. Let’s get going now.”

Somehow, despite all the boundaries that had been crossed over the past few weeks, I hadn’t expected him to attempt to force his way in at this crucial moment. I turned to scowl at him, refusing to allow myself to be intimidated by the brutally businesslike look in his eyes. “Now, wait one minute-”

“May the two of us come along?” Reid put in, before McCullum could snap my head right off, and gave me a gentlemanly smile that was very nice but hardly erased the fact that he was suggesting a downright insane idea. “Just out of interest, you understand. Neither of us have ever seen an officer of the law apprehending a suspect before, and I suspect that it would be a most fascinating sight.”

I hesitated for a long moment, tearing my eyes away from Reid’s persuasive face only with some effort. I really was on the verge of outright denying him, of politely but firmly informing him that this was my actual job and I had no time for his curiosity when an actual murderer was on the loose… But then I glanced over at McGray; saw that he was hardly enthused by the idea either, and saw that he was glaring at Reid like the man was personally responsible for such insanity.

“Why not?” I said, as a sudden moment of admittedly senseless rage rose up within me. Perhaps going so brutally against McGray’s wishes would finally be the reminder that he needed over how genuinely appalling his behaviour was. “As long as you make sure to stay back from any potential action, and let us both do our jobs to the best of our abilities.”

“Of course!” Reid said, and continued to smile at me as McGray glowered in the background. 

\--

We made relatively good time to Dumbiedykes street, but I couldn’t pretend to be particularly glad about that. I was most definitely not a man who believed in omens, or ghosts or whatever other ridiculous thing McGray had chosen to focus on in that particular moment, but I had to admit that I had a bad feeling as the four of us made our way past closed shop fronts and abandoned warehouses. There was nobody around, a high fog was on the town and it all felt rather eerie.

I huddled deeper into my coat, hoping that none of the other three could see the shudders overtaking me. Or that, if they did, they were at least kind enough to assume that I was shuddering from the cold instead of any kind of fear. “There doesn’t seem to be anybody here.”

“That’s bloody obvious, Lassie,” McGray said, also huddled into his coat. He didn’t even bother to hide how wary he was, instead was quite obviously scanning the street for any kind of threat. He always had been just the slightest bit braver than me.

“Maybe if the two of you stopped yapping, we could actually find where our mysterious killer is hiding.” McCullum, who didn’t seem cold at all, rolled his eyes at the both of us; and then, without any further ado, turned to Reid like he was the most relevant person in this situation. “You got anything?”

The last time I had looked at Reid he had looked much as he usually did, an urbane man who seemed strangely resistant to the freezing temperature. But when I looked at him again, confused by McCullum’s question, I saw something terrifyingly different; his skin was waxen pale, his eyes were undeniably red and he turned his head with a strange grace that put me in mind of nothing so much as the Peregrine Falcons I had occasionally seen flying high over Edinburgh. “I can smell something. _Somebody_ , strange and yet familiar…”

A long and frozen moment passed, in which I suspected both I and McGray were finally united in wondering what the hell was going on. And then Reid gave a strange snarling noise, turned on his heel and started marching towards a perfectly nondescript looking alleyway.

“Um,” I said, still stunned by the sight of my old friend with his eyes glinting blood red. And then I gathered myself, remembered that I was the one technically in charge here and chased after him in an admittedly somewhat desperate way. “Doctor Reid, wait! You’re only supposed to be an observer to this situation!”

I was stopped, as I had half expected, by McCullum stepping in front of me. He crossed his arms and gave the two of us a stone faced look, as if we were the interlopers in this situation instead of him. “Look, you two might want to leave about now.”

“What?” McGray asked, and it was gratifying to see the frustration that I’d been feeling all along writ clear across his face. “Geoffrey, be serious. I ken that Percy here is a bit annoying-”

“Hey!”

“-But ye two are civilians, even if ye personally are a pretty damn competent one, and this is our _job_. We’re not going to run away like meek little lambs just because ye tell us to.” McGray ignored my protest, drew himself up in his most imposing manner. Even as annoyed with him as I had been these past few days, I couldn’t help but admit that he looked rather impressive. “Now, would ye please tell us what the fuck is going on?”

McCullum was wearing an expression of frustration at McGray’s stubbornness, and for the first time since I’d met him I found some sympathy for the man. “Adolphus…”

“ _Geoffrey_ ,” McGray said, just as stubborn as before, and raised his finger as if preparing for an argument.

It was at that point, almost by divine providence, that a feral sounding snarl broke the air. Both I and McGray froze, hardly used to hearing a noise that sounded like a freed lion right in the centre of town, and McCullum took one look at our faces and spat out a curse. Before I knew it he was drawing an honest to god sword out from his back, and turning towards the same alleyway that Reid had disappeared into with an expression of pure determination. “Stay the fuck back or suffer the consequences, I won’t tell you again.”

We watched him go in mute shock and then, at the exact same moment, glanced at each other. We were both rather beyond words at present point, but that most certainly didn’t mean that we were beyond communication. McGray’s eyes contained a silent question, as to whether I really wanted to turn on my heel and return to my nice warm house none the wiser. My eyes hopefully contained the corresponding answer: _not on your life_. It took only a moment, and then we were both chasing after McCullum as fast as we possibly could.

The alleyway that we entered into was dark and cold, and at first glance you’d almost think it was perfectly abandoned. Until you blinked, and actually focused, and saw the truth that’d been right in front of your eyes. Which was Reid, standing right in the middle of the alleyway and baring his overly long teeth at a tall, silver haired man who appeared to be holding a corpse to the wall with absolutely no effort at all.

It was all somewhat outside of my area of experience. I found myself swallowing, regarding the entire tableau with a decided feeling of confusion. “What on…?”

Reid spared us only a half second glance before turning back to the silver haired man, but it was enough; his eyes were still glowing red, decidedly inhuman in a way that I genuinely had no idea how to respond to. “Geoffrey, why are they still here?”

“You try stopping these two idiots from doing anything.” McCullum, because of _course_ he had to be there too, snorted from the side; where he was still holding his genuine sword, and pointing it at the silver haired man in an undeniably threatening manner. “You’ll just have to deal with this leech nice and quickly, and then there won’t be any problems.”

“Oh, _please_.” The silver hair man sneered. When I looked at him closer I was stunned to realize that I recognised him; he was a man that my father had done some legal work for a few years back, a Lord Redgrave who was much gossiped about in certain London circles. “I have long been the most powerful Ekon in Britain. Do you really think that you’re going to be able to take me down so easily?”

“Ekon…?” I said somewhat numbly, startled to hear McCullum’s made up term coming from another person’s lips.

“ _Ekon_?” McGray asked from beside me at the exact same time, his eyes darting between the other three players in this strange scene with an undeniable glee.

“Perhaps not _that_ easily,” McCullum spoke over the both of us, like we weren’t even there. I couldn’t even blame him, considering how fraught the situation had suddenly become. “But I’m the head of the Guard of Priwen, and Reid here is now the _current_ most powerful Ekon in Britain. Might take a while, but I think we’re going to be just fine with taking a bastard like you down.”

Redgrave let out an urbane laugh, but it sounded decidedly strained. There was a certain sourness to his expression, a certain curdled fury that made him look terribly bitter and terribly old. “So you say. But will you be able to protect yourselves, while you attempt to do so?”

“Redgrave…” Reid said, far more reasonable than I’d be if I was in his shoes.

“Or to protect your friends?” Redgrave continued over him, lifting his voice. And then his eyes, dead and cold and reminding me of nothing so much as a shark, shifted sideways until they landed right on me.

Before I knew it he was dropping the corpse, and darting across the alleyway so quickly that my eyes registered him as only a blur. He slammed right into me with a casual force that I never would’ve expected from anybody so delicate looking, pushed me right back against the wall and held me there by my throat. I had a brief and terrifying impression of an apex predator, looking at me with such terribly hungry eyes.

The next few moments passed in a blur, rather sped up by my undeniable sense of terror. I had the vague impression of Redgrave’s sneer, of Reid darting towards us with his mouth open to show fangs, of McCullum lunging forward with his sword drawn, of McGray crying out…

And then Redgrave was tossing me aside, so carelessly that I must’ve been meant only as a distraction. I landed in a jumble of limbs, my shoulder jarring hard against the wall of the alleyway, and just about managed to prop myself up in time to see him turn on his heel and speed away. He didn’t even glance in my direction as he went, which struck me as somewhat rude.

Reid, proving himself a true gentleman, immediately darted to my side to check that I was alright. McCullum, proving himself a true bastard, immediately darted after Redgrave; so quickly that he dropped several things as he went, the last being a small silver object that looked like a compact flamethrower. McGray, proving himself truly… something, lingered to check that I was alright; glanced over at me with an expression of open terror on his face, his emotions plain for anybody to see.

I gave a small nod, breathless and dazed as I was, and took a strange pleasure in how McGray’s expression immediately cleared. Without another word he immediately turned on his heel, and left me to Reid’s ministrations as he darted off after McCullum like a hunter born.

\--

“You really should just go home, you know,” Reid said, sounding disapproving.

“I’m _fine_ , Reid.” I waved him off, although admittedly I still had a splitting headache and a decided desire to just sit down for a while and forget all about chasing potential vampires. “Besides, I can’t in all good conscience leave McGray to chase a suspect as strange as this all by himself. I would never hear the end of it.”

Once Reid had got me back to my feet, which had taken a little more time than I was entirely comfortable with, we had almost immediately followed in the wake of McGray, McCullum and our suspect. Reid had tried to argue with me about it every step of the way, but I had remained firm; my job had taken a strange direction lately, but it was still my job and I was determined to do it to the best of my ability. Which led to us trudging through a warehouse, me flinching at every single shadow - in case they would suddenly transform into the man who had thrown me across the alleyway like I weighed nothing at all - and clutching McCullum’s dropped flamethrower like a safety blanket.

“He’s not alone, he has McCullum with him,” Reid said, still sounding rather too irritated to be effectively persuasive. “And I would suspect that McCullum is a great deal more experienced with matters like this than you two.”

“Matters such as hunting down murderers, you mean?” I asked, allowing a tetchy note to enter my voice. Reid was one of the few people that I had no particular desire to be rude to, but that didn’t mean that I’d stand for my life’s work being devalued in such a way. “Honestly, Reid, I will remind you that both I and McGray are the detectives in this scenario. Besides, I sincerely doubt that man is more experienced than me on any matter.”

Before, when I’d said things like that, Reid had given a strange smile and immediately changed the subject. This time he sighed, and passed a hand over his face. “I wish you’d stop doing that.”

I blinked at him in confusion, not used to his voice hardening beyond a mild and polite note. “Doing what?”

“Insulting Geoffrey to my face,” Reid said, which was probably one of the more shocking things that I’d heard on this deeply shocking night. “I know that the two of you have gotten off on the wrong foot, to a rather absurd degree, but he really is a good man. Smart, and brave, and surprisingly kind once you get to know him. I think that you might rather like him, if given the chance.”

I had never really heard Reid sound passionate about anything other than his work before. I hesitated for a long moment, before setting for a non-committal answer. “I doubt that.”

“Ian…” Reid sighed, and I found myself shifting awkwardly as I realised he was disappointed in me. “You might at least tolerate each other, if you just gave each other a chance? Please, it is rather tiresome to have the two of you constantly complaining about each other to me.”

“I wasn’t aware that you two talked so much about me,” I said carefully, my mind whirling. I had often, in these past few weeks, thought grumpily about how mysteriously close Reid and McCullum were but, somehow, I had never once realised just how deep the feelings between them ran. “Or, indeed, at all.”

Reid’s lips tightened for a moment, and I got the sense that he had just lost his temper. “I wish that you’d stop doing that too.”

I was used to people being annoyed with me, but not the usually perfectly mild Reid. I blinked at him in confusion, fighting the urge to get defensive. “What on earth have I done now?”

“Buried your head in the sand.” Reid sent me a sideways look, seeming steadily less bothered with hiding his annoyance. “Again.”

That was slanderous, and I was offended by it. All the more offended because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that he was only telling me the truth. “I don’t bury my head in the sand!”

“In a ten minute conversation you have called an undeniably vampiric suspect merely ‘strange’, have attempted to present your relationship with McGray as one of platonic irritation and have displayed a truly baffling level of mystification as to why I would want to spend my time with Geoffrey despite me travelling to another country with him, referring to him by his Christian name on a constant basis and making my affection for him clear at every possible moment.” Reid gave me an unimpressed look, I writhed underneath it. “What else would you call that behaviour?”

“I really don’t know what you mean.” I sniffed, attempting to appear completely unaffected despite the fact that my mind was whirling. “There are no such things as vampires, my relationship with McGray is _purely_ platonic and I really have no idea why a man such as you would be happy spending time with a man such as McCullum. Honestly, Reid; I don’t know what has gotten into you, but this is hardly the time-”

If I had thought Reid had lost his temper a few minutes ago, I was proved wrong. His entire face twitched, his eyes glowing red, and before I knew it I was being grabbed by the arm and yanked into his space like I weighed nothing at all. He downright _snarled_ , baring his fangs as he did so; it wasn’t a human sound at all, rather something deep and primal that made me feel like an ape about to be leapt upon by a lion.

A large part of me wanted to run away and never look back, but that would’ve simply been embarrassing. I licked my lips and felt a touch awkward instead “...Uh.”

“ _Listen_ , you foolish man,” Reid said; his voice was as smooth as ever, but still had something decidedly of the predator around it. “Vampires definitely do exist, your relationship with McGray is the exact opposite of platonic and the reason why I want to spend time with Geoffrey should be amply obvious to anybody with eyes.”

I blinked at him, a rat caught in a trap. I had the feeling that I was about to receive several home truths, and to be perfectly honest that terrified me even more than my old friend Reid apparently being a vampire did.

“I am well aware that vampires aren’t _supposed_ to exist, I have struggled with that myself, but that doesn’t change the fact that they most certainly do!” He let go of me in one smooth movement, shoved a finger in my face a moment later. “ _I_ am an Ekon, Redgrave is an Ekon, thousands of other men and women are Ekon. And that’s even before we get onto Skals and Vulkods and whatever other types are out there. Trying to ignore that fact will only lead to blood and death, and I would’ve expected a man like you to know that.”

I swallowed, in the face of both his pointing finger and his words, and opened my mouth to attempt a quiet retort.

“Just as, for that matter, I would’ve expected a man such as you to be a little more aware of his personal relationships!” But Reid wasn’t done, and I found myself snapping my mouth shut as he continued with all due rage. “It isn’t an easy thing to face up to the fact that you don’t fit into the box society has created for you, but you have to at least _try_! You act like you hate McGray, like you are forced to be around him and harbour no affection for him whatsoever, but that is quite obviously not true. You have spent the entire time that I’ve been here complaining about how he hasn’t been paying enough attention to you, you communicate with him without words every time you’re in a room together, you _look_ at him like he’s hung the moon. Stop being a _fool_ , Frey!”

My mouth was open again, but it wasn’t for a retort this time. I found myself gawping at Reid, shaking slightly as realization sunk into me. In my defence, I really had thought that I merely hated McGray in a perfectly conventional manner. That didn’t seem like a very good defence, now that it had been thrown back in my face.

“And the reason why I want to spend so much time with Geoffrey McCullum is because I respect him, I like him and I am dedicated to fucking him on an alarmingly regular basis,” Reid continued, coming to the end of his rant with a heaving chest and a decided expression of annoyance still in his eyes. “He is one of the few people that I trust to have my back through thick and thin, even if in his own unconventional way, and is one of the best men that I’ve ever known. To me it isn’t a mystery why I want to spend so much time around him, it’s merely a mystery that not everybody else in the world feels the same way.”

There was a long moment of echoing silence. I had room to retort now, but for some reason I couldn’t manage it. I was still gawping, not sure if I was more stunned by the revelation of my own feelings for McGray or the intensity of Reid’s feelings for McCullum. Both seemed utterly strange, and terrifying, and… And. I genuinely wasn’t sure how to process them beyond that.

In the face of my silence Reid finally seemed to realize how much he’d said. He drew back from me slowly, swallowed, started to look bashful in a way that I usually found somewhat endearing, but currently found to be too little too late. “Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, perfectly,” I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from somebody else entirely. And then I forced myself to clear my throat, looked at him directly and arched an eyebrow that was just this side of challenging. “I can tell that you obviously aren’t feeling yourself. Have you considered that, perhaps, you should be the one going home instead?”

“...Perhaps Geoffrey was right,” Reid said, through obviously gritted teeth, and stormed off without another word.

\--

I had far bigger matters on my plate, we both did at present moment, but somehow I couldn’t help myself from dwelling on Reid’s words as we made our way through the warehouse. At first I found myself undeniably annoyed by his assumptions, reflecting on them in a way that McGray would’ve probably called sulky. But then matters quickly changed. At first I found myself reluctantly thoughtful about them, and then properly considering, and then - with a slow surge of horror - reluctantly accepting as I realized that Reid might just be _right_.

Vampires did exist, it seemed pointless to deny the fact when two of them had snarled in my face within a half hour period. Reid and McCullum were not just neutral acquaintances, but good friends who were almost certainly lovers on the side. And, most importantly of all, my feelings for McGray…

The entire matter left my mind undeniably awhirl. But, luckily and unluckily for me all at once, I was soon distracted. As I and Reid stepped out onto a platform, suspended above a pool of pitch black water in one of the bigger rooms within the warehouse, and immediately came face to face with the silver haired vampire - Lord Redgrave himself - that we’d been chasing for all this time.

The moment he noticed us Redgrave looked deliberately at me, which was one of the more worrying things that’d happened in my life I had to admit. “Hello there.”

I swallowed in response, looking into his sharklike eyes. I was not the type of man to be cowed by anything, I had stood up to some of the most fearsome criminals in my time, but there was something undeniably intimidating about being looked at like I was little more than a walking sack of meat.

It was a mercy that Reid was there, even if I was feeling decidedly complicated emotions towards him at present moment. He stepped in front of me automatically despite his current level of annoyance, glared at Redgrave in an equally intimidating manner. “Leave him alone, Redgrave. Your business is with me, and I would thank you to stop dragging bystanders into it.”

“With _us_ , Reid,” a loud voice, one that I’d never thought to be grateful to hear before, interrupted from below. When I looked down it was to find McCullum standing beneath us, with McGray at his side and a giant sword still clutched in his hand. “Stop toying with weaker prey, and face us like a man.”

Redgrave gave a little smirk at that, one chock full of scornful amusement, and kept his eyes on me. It was hardly an encouraging sign. “I think I will continue to choose my own prey, thank you very much.”

“That’s what got you into this entire situation in the first place,” Reid pointed out, and I could tell that he was going to some effort to appear empathetic. “If you had just been a little less callous, had just considered the importance of lives other than your own…”

“Everything would’ve been a bed of roses, and we would've all skipped happily into the sunset forevermore?” Redgrave seemed hardly moved by his passion. He simply rolled his sharklike eyes instead, somehow managing to keep them fixed on me throughout. “Please, Reid, even you aren’t that naive.”

McGray, with his customary appreciation for how serious any given situation was, snorted below us. “You’re right, Geoffrey. He really is as much of a dick as you said.”

Redgrave’s fixed smirk slipped a little at that, as if a tiny pang of annoyance had gotten through his urbane shell. It would’ve been a somewhat cheering sight, if he hadn’t immediately gathered himself a moment later and sauntered towards me with a threatening glitter in his eye.

“This doesn’t have to end this way, you know,” Reid said, and kept his position standing in front of me. He even spread his arms, arched his back slightly like a predator about to pounce into action. “If you come with us peacefully, I promise that you’ll get a fair trial and a chance to defend yourself. Just stop the slaughter, and we can avoid any further bloodshed.”

“A terribly _sweet_ idea,” Redgrave said dismissively, through gritted teeth. He was obviously a man who scorned kindness, who saw it as a weakness in others and a downright insult when it was extended towards him. “But I have a better plan, one that seems a little more realistic.”

“Redgrave…” Reid said, warningly.

“You see, the fact of the matter is that I really have been slaughtering my way up Britain. Drinking multiple people dry in every town and city I pass through, including this one,” Redgrave said, his tone now thoroughly conversational. It was absurd, to have him talking so lightly of murder as if he was sitting in a tea room and discussing it with friends. “While I’d bet that you, dear sweet Doctor Reid, have been confining yourself to tiny sips from your walking blood bank down there.”

There was a long moment of horrified silence, one so profound that it seemed to echo through the air.

I was the one to recover first, well used to being so appalled. I stepped forward, leaned in to hiss frantically in Reid’s ear with a certain sense of pure panic in my veins. “Is that _true_?”

“Uh-” Reid said, less than reassuringly.

“Oh, rather _wonderfully_ so,” Redgrave answered for him, that downright sadistic smirk back on his face, and moved before anybody could stop him. His eyes went narrow and vividly red, a predator in full flow, and he leapt on Reid so quickly that my eyes blurred from the motion. It took but a moment for him to swipe Reid aside, despite the fact that Reid was a little taller and an awful lot bulkier than him, and my old friend went tumbling through one of the railings and thudding down to the floor below.

“Jonathan!” McCullum cried, with more emotion than I’d ever heard him indulge in before, and immediately darted to the fallen Reid’s side. McGray didn’t move from his own position, simply tilted his head up and met my eyes in a rather horrified way…

And I didn’t have much time to see anything more. Because the moment that my protection was gone, Redgrave was free to focus the entirety of his attention on me. He stepped into my space in one liquid movement, wrapped his hand around my throat with a surprising amount of strength and lifted me right off my feet until I was dangling in the air.

“I want you to know, Reid, that the reason your little friend here is going to die is all because of you,” Redgrave said, almost conversationally as I gasped for air and struggled fruitlessly in his grasp. “And when I slaughter your great big Scottish friend right after him, that will also be because of you. And when I slaughter your walking bloodbag, nice and slowly and right in front of your eyes as he begs for mercy, that will most certainly be because of _you_ and you _alone_.”

McCullum was glancing between me and Reid with frenzied eyes, his expression drawn tight. Reid himself was narrowly managing to uncoil from the ball that he’d landed in, was staring up at the two of us in wordless horror. And as for McGray, _my_ McGray…

“Ian!” He downright screamed, stepping forward with an expression of naked panic clear on his face. In his eyes, even through my lack of oxygen, I saw a thousand missed opportunities; a thousand fights and drinks and smiles and even kisses that we would now never be able to have thanks to Redgrave.

And it was that, strangely enough, that reminded me of McCullum’s dropped flamethrower still tucked securely into my hand.

The only place where Redgrave was holding me was by my throat, which was admittedly extremely unpleasant but gave me a fair range of movement otherwise. I shifted the flamethrower between us, admittedly clumsily due to the lack of oxygen, and aimed it as best I could. It was likely that we’d both be caught in the blast, but there was little way around that. “And this will be entirely because of you.”

Redgrave finally paid attention to me as more than a sack of meat, which was a pity for him. He tore his gaze away from where Reid was attempting to get to his feet, frowned briefly up at me instead. “What…?”

And I took advantage of his brief distraction, his sudden shift just a little closer, to squeeze the flamethrower as best I could. It worked a treat despite my doubts, a ball of flame bursting between us within a moment.

Redgrave was old, frail and hardly dressed appropriately for the weather. Usually none of these would’ve been an issue, he was a vampire after all, but in the case of fire they all proved decided weaknesses. He caught like dry tinder, with an echoing scream that would live in my head until the day I died. He took one staggering step backwards, and then another. And then plummeted sideways through the gap that Reid had created, dragging me with him along the way.

Redgrave hit the ground with a wet sounding squelch, and curled into himself as he laid there. At any other time it would’ve meant nothing to him, he would’ve been able to gain his feet in an instant and cause even more chaos, but the fire had already done its job. He was already crumbling into ash, unable to heal or save himself.

I, thankfully, was far more lucky. Or a little more lucky. Certainly less unlucky, if we were going to quibble with semantics. I fell too, but out of Redgrave’s grasp. Instead of tumbling onto the ground, and expiring in a horrible concoction of broken bones and fire, I plunged into the freezing, dark water just a little to the left of him. The cold and damp of it took any remaining air from my lungs, but also thankfully put out the fire that’d caught my long winter coat.

I floated for a long moment in the dark, in a rather in between state. I knew full well that I should’ve been struggling for the surface, should’ve been fighting for my life as desperately as I could, but I felt strangely lacking in energy. I was proud that I had saved my friends, and ended a beast like Redgrave, and that had to be enough. Maybe I would just rest here for a while, let the water put out any remaining flames and think on my fine deeds…

And then I heard a muffled yell, and a slightly less muffled splash. And before I knew it warm arms were wrapped around my waist, and I was being tugged out of the water until my head breached the surface and I was able to gasp painful air into my lungs.

McGray was the one who had saved me, which was hardly a surprise when I thought of it. He looked angrier than I’d ever seen him, which was also a non-surprise, and was glaring at me from up close as he clutched my waist hard enough to leave bruises. “What the fuck were ye _thinking_ , Percy?”

I probably should’ve been offended by his tone, or at the very least unimpressed by his desire to leave bruises on me. Instead, still getting air into my lungs, I found myself smiling foolishly at him instead. “You called me Ian.”

“Because I thought ye were about to die!” McGray snapped at me, obviously taking it as some kind of criticism. He was so grumpy and foolish and difficult, and in that moment I loved him more than I’d ever loved anything before. “And, in fact, ye almost did. Just in a _completely_ different way than expected. Of all the small minded, utterly insane, stupid arse plans to come out of yer head… Do ye have any idea how wrong it could’ve gone? Or how hurt ye could’ve gotten? Or how scared we all were? I ken ye don’t like thinking unless its about ways to insult me, Percy, but this goes beyond the fucking-”

“Nine Nails?” I interrupted him dreamily, moving to wrap my arms around his broad shoulders so I could brace myself a little better.

“ _What_?”

“You called me Ian,” I repeated fondly, and used my new grip on him to drag him into a kiss. He was undeniably confused at first, downright frozen against me, but when I opened my mouth to him he seemed to get with the programme rather quickly. We made out there in the water, my hands sliding up into his thick hair and him gripping my waist so warmly that I couldn’t even mind the inevitable bruises that were to come.

“What the _fuck_?” I heard McCullum say clearly in the background, and thought I heard a mumbled reply from Reid, but could hardly bring myself to care all that much. There was time to get annoyed at him later, after I’d finished mapping out every single inch of McGray’s mouth with my tongue.

\--

The week after that passed in somewhat of a haze, most of it spent being increasingly distracted by McGray’s lips and hands and eventually cock, but eventually it came time for Reid and McCullum to depart back to London and leave the two of us alone.

“I really am sorry to see you go,” I told Reid, as we walked through Waverly station together. The last time I had made this journey I had been tense and resentful; but this time, with McGray’s fingerprints all over me underneath my clothing, I felt a lot more relaxed. “Let’s try not to leave it so long next time, mm?”

“Definitely,” Reid said, sounding like he meant it, but still slid me a slightly awkward sideways glance. “Although I am somewhat surprised that you feel that way, after everything.”

“After all that you said, you mean?” I asked breezily, having already largely forgiven him for his speech in the warehouse given what positive results it had produced, and lowered my tone as we passed by several highly respectable looking gentlemen. “Or, ah, after the whole vampire issue?”

“The Ekon issue,” Reid corrected me, far more politely than McCullum had taken to doing so over the past week; after a while, driven by annoyance at his general demeanor, I had taken to getting the word wrong in as many ways as humanly possible just to make him grind his teeth. “But both, I suppose.”

“The _Vampire_ issue rather solved itself. Unless you bring another one up with you when you visit the next time, I see no issues there,” I informed him, and raised my voice again to signal that we should move away from such truly scandalous topics. “And as for all that you said… Well, some of it was justified and all of it led to a good end. I won’t hold it against you more than is reasonable, I promise.”

Reid sent me a sly sideways glance at that, and I got the impression that I was about to be teased. Somehow I minded it a lot less than I ever thought I would. “A good end?”

I smiled at him, admittedly slightly distractedly. My mind was filled with all the things that I and McGray had done together over the past week, from me throwing myself at him in that warehouse to him bracing himself over my body just this morning. “Multiple ones, as a matter of fact.”

Reid went slightly red at that piece of daring, one that I wouldn’t have indulged in before McGray had stripped all shame from me, but his laugh was genuine. We made our way through the rest of the station cheerfully absorbed in fond conversation, until we encountered McGray and McCullum standing on a platform and loading the last of the luggage into a private compartment.

“How long until it goes?” McGray asked, stepping back and acknowledging my presence with a look so heated that I felt my cheeks flush automatically in response.

“About three minutes or so, enough time to say our goodbyes,” McCullum said, with a brief look of equal passion in Reid’s direction, and gave McGray a smile of such warmth that I fully suspected that it was meant to annoy me. “It was good to see you again, you big lug. Even if you have apparently developed terrible taste since the last time we met.”

The man was intolerable, and didn’t even have McGray’s roguish good looks to make up for it. I rolled my eyes at him, determined to remain unaffected. “Strange, I was just saying much the same thing to Reid.”

“Ha ha,” McGray said, and made a face at me in return as Reid only rolled his eyes at our antics and climbed onto the train. “Come back sooner next time, ye hear?”

“We shall do our very best,” Reid answered for McCullum, who was now busy glaring at me in a highly unimpressed way, and sent me a small smile that clearly said that all of our previous struggles had been forgiven. “And hopefully in a less dramatic way this time.”

The train whistle blew, and McCullum finally seemed to gather himself. He clasped McGray’s biceps in a manly way, one that I would’ve been highly jealous of only a week ago, and exchanged one last glare with me before following Reid onto the train. McGray waved like a small child as they slowly pulled away from us, and I confined myself to what I hoped was a mature looking nod and watching until they left the station entirely.

“What strange men,” I remarked, as the platform quietened down around us once again.

“Nice enough, though,” McGray reminded me, which I supposed was a perfectly reasonable point. “And they helped us out a hell of a lot.”

“Mm, I can’t deny that,” I said, and knew full well that he grasped that I didn’t just mean all the unfortunate business with Redgrave. I turned to him just slightly, met his eyes and had to resist the frankly insane urge to jump on him then and there. “So, back to solving utterly bizarre cases, then?”

“Aye, and back to helping utterly bizarre people,” McGray said, and gave me a warm look for a long moment more before turning on his heel. We started walking by mutual assent, our shoulders brushing as we weaved our way through the crowd. “Maybe ye’ll even figure out why ye keep tagging along with me, in the end.”

I smiled, recalling both our conversation several weeks earlier and McGray’s last kiss pressed against my lips just this morning. “Oh, I think I already have.”

And we strolled out of the station and into the night, side by side as we always were.


End file.
